Nearfield Instruments announces appointment of CEO Jos Maas

Nearfield Instruments (NFI) is pleased to announce that it has appointed Jos Maas as CEO. Maas brings with him more than 20 years of experience growing and scaling high-tech business. Most recently, he served as General Manager for the desktop Scanning Electron Microscopy portfolio of Thermo Fisher Scientific. He also has significant experience in the semiconductor industry, where he spent 13 years at ASML in various functions.

“I am grateful to get the opportunity to join Nearfield Instruments and would like to thank Hamed Sadeghian and Roland van Vliet for their trust. The potential of Nearfield’s technology is enormous, and I look forward to help scaling the company in the coming years”, comments Maas.

Roland van Vliet is appointed as COO and will direct his full attention to the operational aspects of the growth and transformation NFI is undergoing.

To emphasize NFI’s continued pursuit of product leadership, Hamed Sadeghian, CTO, is appointed as company president and will continue to drive and establish Nearfield Instruments as the metrology innovation leader.

Van Vliet and Sadeghian add: “As co-founders we are very happy that Jos Maas will strengthen our company. With his vast experience, he will help grow Nearfield Instruments in the years to come.”

Nearfield Instruments selected as one of Europe’s 40 top high-tech start-ups to pitch at the High Tech Venture Days 2020.

Nearfield Instruments is proud to announce that it has been selected as one of Europe’s 40 top high-tech start-ups to pitch at the High Tech Venture Days (HTVD) 2020. HTVD is one of Europe’s leading meeting places for tech companies, international investors and corporates. The two-day conference will take place on October 13-14 in Dresden, Germany.

Dr. Hamed Sadeghian, Managing Director & CTO, will represent Nearfield Instruments by pitching and joining the networking discussions. Here he will take his conversation partners on the journey of Nearfield Instruments, the highly innovative developer and supplier of game-changing metrology solutions for the semiconductor manufacturing industry.

To achieve new functionalities and to make optimum use of the available wafer space semiconductor devices will shrink to atomic scale dimensions using novel, sensitive materials while at the same time being designed in full three-dimensional configurations including high aspect ratio processes and sub-surface 3D features. With its Automated High-Throughput 3D Scanning Probe Metrology products, Nearfield Instruments enables on-device, non-destructive measurements for in-line process monitoring at industry-best measurement precision and reproducibility aimed at current and next-generation semiconductor device manufacturing.

We look forward meeting you at HTVD2020 and show you how Nearfield Instruments develops and offers daringly innovative solutions to process control challenges in the premium nano-electronics industry in a technologically and economically viable way.

Nearfield Instruments B.V. opens new office at HTC Eindhoven

We are proud to announce Nearfield Instruments (NFI) has officially opened a new office location at the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven on 1st September 2020. At this new location NFI will focus on the expertise area of mechatronics systems design and control for its current and new products.

Dr. Hamed Sadeghian, Managing Director of Nearfield Instruments comments: “The core of our products is based on state-of-the-art mechatronics combined with advanced control in both hardware and software. This will be the focus of our new location at HTC Eindhoven: continuous improvement on wafer throughput in combination with a significant increase in positioning accuracy. Together this makes for a serious productivity booster for our customers.

Moreover, being present at HTC Eindhoven, will allow, on one hand, to be closer to Innovation Industries, one of our investors, whom we value for their hands-on guidance and support in optimizing our scaling up, and on the other hand to further strengthen our collaboration with our Eindhoven-based suppliers that focus on development and manufacturing of mechatronics modules.”

According to Roland van Vliet, Managing Director of Nearfield Instruments, “HTC Eindhoven is the heart of Brainport Eindhoven, known for its high concentration of high tech and knowledge-intensive industry. As NFI continuously strives to develop and offer daringly innovative solutions to process control challenges in the premium nano-electronics industry, expanding our activities to HTC Eindhoven is the logical step to further accelerate the growth of Nearfield Instruments”.

NFI’s Rotterdam location, which includes offices, laboratory, and ISO Class 5 cleanroom facilities, will remain NFI’s headquarters and main product development and manufacturing site

LeadinWay and Nearfield Instruments establish sales partnership for Taiwan R.O.C.

LeadinWay Co., Ltd is honored to announce that it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Nearfield Instruments B.V., an expert and leading company of Metrology Equipment for Semiconductor Industry based on Scanning Probe Microscopy, to enter into a partnership supporting the sales of Nearfield Instruments’ products in Taiwan R.O.C.

Nearfield Instruments of Rotterdam, The Netherlands develops High-Throughput Scanning Probe Metrology systems that enable direct measurement of Semiconductor manufacturing process control parameters that are either very hard to measure with other techniques or only in a destructive manner or at very low throughput. Nearfield Instruments’ area of focus is semiconductor wafer fabs and includes both Process Window Discovery and Process Window Expansion & Control.

Established in 2002, LeadinWay is a highly regarded marketing/sales/service provider to the Semiconductor, Electrical, Specialty Chemical, and Alternative Energy industries in Taiwan, China, and Southeast Asia.

Nearfield Instruments B.V. secures Series B funding accelerating development and growth

November 20, 2019 – Nearfield Instruments B.V. of Rotterdam, the Netherlands has secured Series B funding with participation from Eugene Investment & Securities Co., Ltd and Scylla Technologies Inc. acting as general partners of the Eugene-Scylla NFI New Technology Business Investment Fund, and existing investors Innovation Industries and Samsung Venture Investment Corporation. The funding will be used to introduce to the market its first product, a High-Throughput Scanning Probe Metrology (HT-SPM) system for metrology of advanced IC’s. Furthermore, the funding enables Nearfield Instruments to grow its production capacity and initiate the development of the second metrology product in its portfolio. Nearfield Instruments is a spin-off of the Netherlands Organisation for applied-scientific Research TNO. TNO will remain a shareholder in Nearfield Instruments.

High Throughput and 3D Angstrom Precision

For the past 50 years the semiconductor industry has marched at the pace of Moore’s Law: doubling the computing power of a chip every two years whereas simultaneously chips have become cheaper to manufacture. To achieve new functionalities and to make optimum use of the available wafer space, IC devices will shrink to atomic scale dimensions using novel, complex designs, energy-sensitive and opaque materials, 3D structures and multiple stacked features. This leads to several new challenges in process control metrology as the chip features now will need non-destructive characterization in 3D at high throughput, even on the device level.

Nearfield Instruments’ High Throughput Scanning Probe Metrology system (HT-SPM) enables direct measurement of process control parameters that are either very hard to measure with other techniques or only in a destructive manner or at very low throughput. Specifically measuring the 3D shape of high-aspect ratio features at angstrom level precision with substantial increase in throughput is enabled by Nearfield Instruments’ first product. Moreover, Nearfield Instruments’ patented revolutionary metrology architecture can solve major next-generation metrology challenges introduced by the change from 2D to 3D chip features, which lead to very high aspect ratio multilayered structures, wafer stress driven bow and vertical gate dimension control issues. Nearfield Instruments’ area of focus is semiconductor wafer fabs and includes both Process Window Discovery and Process Window Expansion & Control.

High-Tech Innovation Ecosystem

Managing Directors of Nearfield Instruments, Dr. Hamed Sadeghian and Dr. Roland van Vliet comment: “It is a joyous coincidence we can announce this important investment together with the opening of our state-of-the-art manufacturing and system integration cleanroom facility. The support and commitment of our new partner Eugene Investment & Securities together with our existing shareholders Innovation Industries, Samsung Venture Investment Corporation and TNO Tech Transfer provides us all at Nearfield Instruments with the right expertise and momentum to strengthen the foundation and realize the growth of our company. Our development partners and Nearfield Instruments, a true innovation ecosystem, will continuously deliver and develop highly innovative solutions to the complex atom-scale process control challenges the semiconductor manufacturing industry encounters in its continuous strive towards even more powerful and lower power-consuming electronics.”